According to the DNP3 standard, an outstation is considered to have the states “Local” or “Remote”. The IEC 61850 IED in turn can be in “Local”, “Station”, “Remote”, “Off”, or “All” state. A DNP3 controlling station can perform control operations in “Station”, “Remote”, and “All” protection relay states. However, it is the controlled protection relay's application in the outstation that rejects or accepts control operations based on the control allowance states and not the DNP3 protocol stack. In an RTU (non-intelligent outstation) application, the DNP3 stack rejects the commands.